(Note: At the end of this post is information on how you can receive your own virtual copy of a now-somewhat-legendary mix of Christmas music I made in 2001. The reasons why I made it - and how, in the years since, I lost and found the joy that went into it - are what follows. )
My feelings on "the holidays" have always been mixed.
Even when I was a kid, I always associated this time of year with a lot of running around. Between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we'd be zipping from one set of grandparents to midnight mass to our house to another set of grandparents and then back home. Then, when I was in high school, my parents divorced, which meant one more place to go on Christmas. I'd head to my Dad's on the evening of the 23rd, then to grandma's, then mass, then mom's, then grandma's, then home. A two-day, four-house gauntlet.
Then in college...well, you're never really "home" in college, are you? The house you grew up in and the dorm with your hot plate both get tagged with that description, meaning you're never really there. This feeling was always exacerbated by the break between Thanksgiving and New Year's. There was a little bit of me in Chicago, and a little bit of me in Ohio.
After college, I moved into a series of apartments and this feeling of "the holiday gauntlet" was inescapable. I didn't own a car, so I'd take the train down to the 'burbs or have my parents pick me up, loaded down as I was with presents and a suitcase. It never felt relaxing to me, pausing just long enough in places to eat, drink and do my best to be merry. I never really felt at home.
Look, I'm not saying being around my family is a miserable experience. It isn't. I love them, and it doesn't feel like Christmas to me if you're not around friends and family. But for the ten years after my parent's divorce, I never felt like I was in a place, emotionally or physically, to be able to fully enjoy Christmas. Again, there were good times. But I never felt like I could sit back and soak in the spirit (much less The Holy Spirit).
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One of the other things I always disliked about Christmas was the music. If you want to put me through hell, make me listen to music I hate. And since most Christmas albums are cash-ins - recorded for easy money or to fulfill a contract requirement - the resulting music is generally awful. It's not that I hated the sentiments, I just hated the arrangements.
I trace the genesis of my dislike of Christmas music back to my high school days in show choir. From 1990 to 1993, I, along with several of my classmates, spent cold December afternoons and evenings traipsing around the south suburbs singing the most common of Christmas songs. Over and over and over. (And yes, Virginia, there was accompanying choreography.) While this time period accounts for some of my most cherished memories, there is nothing more depressing than realizing you need to take "I'll Be Home For Christmas" out of that afternoon's repertoire because you'll be singing at a nursing home. And I won't even get into the lack of irony it takes for a bunch of white kids from a Catholic high school to run around singing a calypso version of "Mary's Boy Child." After that, I wanted to be as far away from the Christmas standards as possible.
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I don't need to rehash what most of us were feeling in the fall/winter of 2001. But I'll tell you that my friends and family instinctually drew closer. It was against this backdrop that I decided to counteract my usual grumpiness around Christmas.
So in the winter of 2001, I set out to make a mix of Christmas songs that would give me the spirit again: The ones that married seasonal good cheer with the sense of fun that most people seemed to have this time of year. The result was A Rock and Soul Christmas. This was the cover:
Here were the liner notes:
If you know me (and undoubtedly you do as I’m not generally prone to giving presents to strangers), you know that music plays a rather important role in my life. Sadly, there are quite a few bad Christmas albums out there. Mannheim Steamroller alone has released seven of them.
So this year I set out to pull together some of my favorite Christmas songs — songs that not only expressed the spirit of the season but also didn’t, as a wise man once said, suck. While a few great tracks didn’t make the final cut (Elvis’s “Blue Christmas,” Cheech and Chong’s “Santa Claus and His Old Lady”), I think the ones that did fit the bill very well.
A note to my friends of non-Christian faiths: Though the selections here focus mainly on Christian holidays, I think the sentiments expressed within them contain universal truths that we can all appreciate during this time of year. Regardless of your expression of faith, a song like Clarence Carter’s “Back Door Santa” speaks to all of us. A note to my atheist friends: You’re all going to hell. Repent now. Just kidding.
The artwork on the cover was blatantly ripped off from A Charlie Brown Christmas as well as James Brown’s Funky Christmas. I’ll leave it to you to figure out what came from where.
I hope this CD finds you well and happy and gets you in a Christmas mood. If I can save just one person from buying A Rosie O’Donnell Christmas then it will be worth it.
Happy holidays and much love,
Scott
I sent the mix to a bunch of friends as a substitute for cards and presents and it went over really well. Every year since, I hear from one or two friends who tell me they've pulled out RSC during a party, or while they're opening presents. This brings me no small amount of joy.
Like most endeavors of this type, it ended up making itself. This isn't the coolest, hippest mix of Christmas tracks ever assembled or even a collection of my personal favorites. In fact, it's deliberately corny in some instances. Basically, I wanted to create both a Christmas-party record and a Christmas party-record. It's also designed for all-ages listening (There's one track on there that's a little heavy on innuendo for the littlest ones, I suppose, but since I have friends with kids who say they play it, I'm not losing sleep over it).
I put together another mix the next year called Songs For Swinging Santas, which mixed jazz, blues, and cocktail hour together. It too was well-received, and I figured I'd do a variation on the theme each year.
Then, in 2003, I got married for the first time, which added yet another level of familial stress, not to mention more places to be, including an occasional trip to Phoenix to see my ex's family. They were all very nice people but...well, suffice it to say there's a fair amount of romance in the notion of a White Christmas and that gets all shot to hell in Phoenix. Plus, it was our first year as a married couple and we spent the holidays on a honeymoon cruise around the Caribbean and this, coupled with a lack of ideas as to what to do for that year's holiday mix meant I passed on putting one together.
For a number of reasons, I lost the spirit again over the couple of years that followed. The nadir of my holiday experiences was Christmas 2005 when my marriage was breaking up. As luck would have it, we were spending the holidays in Phoenix that year. It's not possible for me to describe how isolated and out-of-time I felt then. It was awful. One of the lowest points of my life.
The echo of that time carried through the successive holiday seasons, which brought some discord to my then-newish relationship with Erin. She loves everything about Christmas, always has. For someone whose feelings about the holidays were mixed to begin with and were now marred by an altogether unpleasant association, this was hard to take. Also - and this really is deserving of special mention - she loves The Carpenters' Christmas Portrait. It is a holy relic to her. All due respect to Karen and Richard, but...it just wasn't my thing.
I don't know what lousy metaphor best describes the last couple years - a wound that's slowly healed? A rough edge sanded over time? - but I'd found myself slowly coming around on the holidays again. This year, I noticed something weird: I was getting excited for Christmas. When I saw some Christmas trees on display, I involuntarily said "Oooh!" Out loud. I oohed, people! At first, I thought my renewed sense of Christmas spirit derived from all the folks telling me how much Rock and Soul Christmas was again adding to their Christmas celebrations. But earlier this week, I figured out what was really driving it:
For the first time in 18 years, I was going to be home for Christmas.
Or perhaps, more specifically, Erin and I would own a home for Christmas. We closed on this place during Thanksgiving week, just in time for the grind. And though we'd be running the gauntlet again this year, I was looking forward to it. Because no matter what, at the end of the day, we'd be at home together, not just in a place we called home. Not some apartment we were renting because we weren't sure where we wanted to end up, not spending the night at our parents' place, not in a convent singing for a bunch of nuns and mothers...no, we'd be home.
Hey, I realize that sounds trite. For God's sakes, it's cribbing the name of one of those cursed songs from the days of show choir. But it just makes sense now.
I've been blessed with many, many gifts this year. If you're reading this post, you're one of the people responsible since I pretty much I owe my career to the Internet. Eight years after I put together A Rock and Soul Christmas, I feel like I'm once again in a place where I can really enjoy it. So I'd like to share it with you.
If you'd like a copy, e-mail me at ourmaninchicago (@) gmail.com. If you're someone I know - or if you follow me on Twitter or are someone who reads this blog and I can be reasonably certain you're not a member of the RIAA - I'll let you know how to get it. (For legal reasons, I'm not posting the track listing but hey, you don't know what your presents are until you open them either, and that doesn't stop you, does it?)
Merry Christmas.
Home for Christmas
What's wrong with being sexy?
As a media critic, I respect Robert Feder about as much as I respect anyone in the field; he and Phil Rosenthal are the best examples in Chicago of how it should be done. But this week, I think Feder's trying to have it both ways in criticizing some local news personalities who appeared in an upcoming photo exhibition at a local art gallery.
Last week, in a post on his Vocalo blog, Robert Feder criticized a photo shoot that appeared in in Michigan Avenue magazine that featured local television anchors and reporters - Mark Suppelsa, Anne State and Anna Davlantes, among others - in "sexy photos." The personalities in the pictures aren't nude or even scantily clad. But they are sexy, in a well-scrubbed, preppy kind of way. Feder reported the photos are part of "they’re among 30 photos of local broadcasters...in “On TV/Off TV,” an exhibit opening Nov. 20 at Packer Schopf Gallery."
Here's the crux of Feder's point in a post titled "Sexy photos expose TV news as a glamor game":
"[The photos underscore] the willingness of these media people (and their approving bosses) to risk whatever journalistic credibility they have in order to ratchet up their Q scores and Nielsen ratings."
But let's be clear about what these pictures are: they're part of a gallery's photo exhibit, and were also printed in an upscale, local magazine that chronicles the social scene of Chicago. They weren't created by the news organizations these people work for, nor were they primarily intended to be used by their PR flacks for publicity purposes.
I disagree with Feder's take here, but I respect his opinion and the point he's making: If you're too sexy, you won't be taken seriously in your chosen occupation. It's a legitimate point of debate and Feder's right to discuss it in a journalistic context, like his blog. But again, I disagree. And, not for nothing, but as editor of Playboy.com, I know a little about outward displays of sexuality.
From my point of view, a person's sexuality is as much a part of who they are as their job. And expressing a confident, healthy, honest sexuality should be admired in the same way as one's skill in the boardroom or the newsroom. This isn't about forcing your sexuality on someone else or using it to make up for a lack of talent, this is about letting someone express their whole self in an appropriate context. (If you saw any of these folks in public dressed in the same outfits from their photo shoot, would you think it was inappropriate?)
Arguably, all the people in this photo shoot are talented, in-demand professionals. As if to underscore that point, one of the women in that shoot, Anna Devlantes was just signed to a new contract at Fox Chicago.
Feder broke the news of Davlantes' move on his blog. But instead of using her standard head shot (something that, as a longtime media critic, Feder would have easy access to either from his files or after a quick phone call to her publicist), he went with...one of the "sexy" photos.
What gives? How can Feder criticize the sexing up of these news professionals while using use the same photos to sex up the visuals of his blog? Plus, Feder's blog is a journalistic endeavor. If these photos do not add to the journalistic conext of these men and women, then why use them again here?
I tweeted about this, and Feder's response (via Twitter) was: "From the editor of Playboy.com?" His point, I assume, was that I have no standing in this debate as Playboy engages in the sexing up of a person's image on a daily basis. But as I said above, I think that's exactly what makes me have some skin in this game, pun intended.
I sent a couple responses to him, essentially the same points I made above. Feder's response was "Just because I question their judgment in shooting them doesn't mean the sexy anchor photos shouldn't be seen."
Fair point. Again, Feder's a journalist. He has a responsibility to discuss the images of news personalities in town and how it affects their jobs. But his initial post on the existence of the photos was last week, effectively putting the photos into the public eye. There was plenty of conversation about it, so it's not like his post disappeared into the ether.
So I don't understand his reuse of the photos in a different context. Either he's trying to contribute to their supposed erosion of journalistic credibility through their continued use (which I doubt, the man's a professional) or he's just trying to sex up the visuals his blog about journalism. Nothing wrong with that, but if it's not OK for local journalists to crank up the hotness, why is it OK for one of their chief critics' blogs?
To reiterate: I don't think there's anything wrong with being sexy, and I don't think sexuality prevents a person from doing their job effectively. While there are perfectly valid counterarguments here, you can't say sexuality has no place in journalism, while trying to...find a place for it in journalism.
UPDATE: Michigan Avenue has additional photos online (h/t Gapers Block).
Playing catch-up on Chicago media
Disclosure: I've had past business or personal interactions with most of the people or entities named above and plan to have them in the future. To the best of my ability, I try not to let the above color my opinions. Where such interactions might cloud my judgment on an issue, I tend to avoid writing about the topic altogether or confess to a specific bias or association so the reader can judge for him or herself.
Between work-related matters and our impending move to the South Side, I haven't had much brainpower or free time to spare here. But there have been some significant events in Chicago's media landscape recently so I figured it made sense to do a quick roundup. Here's a month's worth of posts:
Chi-Town Daily News folds and becomes Chicago Current: The first issue hit the streets this week. Creating a niche publication is smart (are you listening....um, everybody?), and an integrated web-print model is too. The full-page Mercedes-Benz ad that ran on the back page suggests support from the ad market. But here's what I don't get about CC's plans: From a Crain's story about the new publication:
"Chicago Current will be distributed to about 2,000 aldermen, City Hall department heads, judges and other public officials; it will also be available free at downtown Chicago Transit Authority train stations. The targeted readership of elected officials and bureaucrats will give advertisers — including contractors and advocacy groups — reason to pay for ads, he says."[Emphasis mine]
From the Chicago Current's "About Us" page:
From incisive coverage of City Hall, the CTA and other agencies, to the nitty gritty on topics like lobbying and campaign finance, the Current brings you vitally important information you won't find anywhere else.[Emphasis mine]
Based on the new website and the first edition of the paper, Chicago Current is trodding much the same ground as the Chi-Town Daily News did. Nothing wrong with that, but add it to the above text about "the nitty gritty" of dealings that most pols would rather see hidden from view and it looks like the Current wants to reveal the insider deals of politicians - the same people it wants as its audience. To quote Chasing Amy: "Can I explain the audience principle to you? If you insult and accost them, then we have no audience!" Those same pols would probably take a dim view of any advertisers - who depend on those same folks for their business - supporting such a publication.
Maybe I'm off-base about Chicago Current's plans but there's not a lot of evidence to the contrary. While Geoff Dougherty deserves a lot of credit for quickly launching another new business venture, my friend and Chicago Media Future Conference co-organizer Mike Fourcher rightly points out that new media ventures need to work harder on their brands than anything else and perhaps more time spent defining audience and content would have worked to the Current's advantage. Still, the marketplace is getting crowded, which leads to...
Chicago News Co-operative launches, Chicago Community Trust puts its money where the names are: If I'm fuzzy on the plans for Chicago Current, I'm even more vague on the Chicago News Co-operative. And I'm not alone. As the former Mayor Daley used to say "Where's their program?"
What I do know is they've got a lot of big names, many of whom used to work at the Chicago Tribune. But if we're all agreed that the Web will play a vital role in the future of news, then this isn't the team you want leading that charge. The Tribune's leadership in the online space came after those folks left. Plus, the media spaces the CNC said they'll work in are organizations like WTTW and WBEZ. I'm a frequent viewer/listener or both, but where's the innovation there? (The CNC says it will launch a site called Chicago Scoop in January.)
On a side note, the CNC was the recipient of $50,000 in grant money from the Chicago Community Trust. Later, Chicago Tonight contributor Rich Samuels tweeted that the Community Trust would no longer fund the Chicago Matters series, a joint venture between WTTW and WBEZ. As the CNC is currently using office space at WTTW, I bet there were a few awkward moments around the coffee maker that morning.
As for the Chicago Community Trust's other funding decisions, I question why the CNC, so flush with connections and resources, had a greater need for cash than smaller, more innovative shops like Gapers Block, Windy Citizen and Beachwood Reporter, which only received $35,000. Perhaps it's because the CNC's plans are more ambitious. But according to the Community Trust's press release, the money will be used "to support development of a new L3C cooperative business model providing enterprising journalistic coverage of the Chicago area using various Web, print and broadcast platforms, including a new Web site called "The Chicago Scoop." From that description, the ambition is hard to intuit.
The takeaway for the Current and CNC is this: In the absence of actual evidence, people tend to fill in the blanks - or create your brand's identity - themselves. Why would you want to give away control of such a valuable resource?
James Warren becomes publisher of the Chicago Reader: I don't have much to say here, but from where I sit it would seem to be good news that the Chicago Reader's survived the questionable direction of Tampa's Ben Eason and that a person steeped in Chicago journalism is at the helm. But to hear Reader editor Alison True tell it, this could be a potential minefield:
"It’s good to hear the board and Warren acknowledging how important journalism is to the success of the company,” says Reader editor Alison True. "Because we’re looking forward to getting the resources to support it. But if that wall disappears, so does our credibility."
In the past year, the Reader's done some vital work, in spite of the perceived threat from Team Eason. Perhaps True knows her team does its best work when it's got something to fight against, whether that enemy is real or imagined.
The rise of Chicago Now: It's been interesting to watch the direction of Chicago Now. They've adopted a startup mentality, despite the appearance of the full force of TribCo resources behind them. (I cracked up at this tweet from RedEye's web editor, which suggested there was something serendipitous, not synergistic, about a Tribune marketing project getting prominent placement on a Tribune blogging platform.) As Marcus Gilmer points out on Chicagoist:
There's no denying there are quality reads on the site: the Parking Ticket Geek has become particularly notable in the wake of the parking meter privatization, the CTA Tattler is still a go-to for us, our pals at Gapers Block have a page, and there's some good sports coverage. But at 126 blogs and counting, the site still feels unwieldy, making it more difficult to find other potential quality reads."
I've joked that by 2010, one out of three people you meet in Chicago will have a blog at Chicago Now. The site wants to be all things to all people, to provide blogs that run the gamut of Chicagoans' interests. It's a clear goal, designed to take advantage of local advertising dollars. It's important to note they're not trying to be a publication, just an agnostic platform (like HuffPo), so this broad effort may pay off, especially with other TribCo entities like WGN Radio offering them broadcast space on its airwaves. To truly succeed, they'll need to embrace these opportunities, not pretend like they lucked into them and ensure that audiences can easily find what they have to offer.
Robert Feder joins Vocalo, Vocalo comes in from the cold: Before the launch of Vocalo, a joint radio-and-web venture from Chicago Public Radio, some of WBEZ's best talent worked behind-the-scenes to help make the project a reality. They brought the same passion to this project that they brought to WBEZ. Then Chicago Public Radio decided it wanted to divorce itself from Vocalo, making it completely user-generated, except when it came to funding. CPR quietly funded the program, hiding its true intention from its subscribers and siphoning off resources to keep it afloat. The product didn't improve - the passion just wasn't there - and WBEZ subscribers were upset. Finally realizing that a little professionalism wouldn't hurt the product, Chicago Public Radio brought WBEZ and Vocalo together online. (Clicking the Blog button on 'BEZ's website takes you to Vocalo.org.)
In a further indictment of the anything-goes style of the early days of the site, CPR also brought in former Sun-Times media columnist Robert Feder as a blogger for Vocalo (or is it WBEZ? It's hard to tell...). Feder's work at the Sun-Times was indispensible, but his recent comments about Chicago Now - despite having a ring of truth - suggest he's blinding himself to the reality of the problems in his new neighborhood. It would also help his cause if the material of his columns (Sneed, Bill Kurtis's wacky commercials, retreads of his previous work) wasn't so weak. Vocalo's become more transparent lately, but whether more professionalism is the key to its success remains to be seen.
Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson return to CBS2: On Friday night, Kurtis and Jacobson anchored the CBS2 10 p.m. newscast together for the first time in the last 20 years. It's clear CBS2 wants viewers to associate its current newscast with the groundbreaking reporting efforts of its heyday. The first half of the broadcast delivered on that score, offering up stories like a Pam Zekman investigation of the inability of Chicago police offers to properly meet the demand of 911 calls. But the constant references to days gone by, not to mention a Friday night appearance, made the whole affair feel like Old Timers' Day at the ballpark. Moreover, the news of this supposedly monumental event didn't break until the day before, robbing CBS2 of a potential ratings boost.
If CBS2 wants to convince people that they're still doing hard-hitting news at 10 p.m., it could dump the lame "Cold Case" moments it's been doing with Kurtis, sign him and Jacobson to short-term contracts, pair them with up-and-coming reporters and build on the future promise of their past gravitas.
Moreover, CBS2 ought to pick a neighborhood in Chicago, open up a local bureau there, and do some Web-only reporting. This venture could be accomplished with a skeleton crew investment, but the returns would be significant. They'd be the only local television station doing this, and it would show they were committed to not being pretty, but being real innovators.
The best thing I've read all week
I might be biased thanks to my line of work but this spoke to me:
"The women are also dressed in period threads, and many have big Afros. I am happy to say it brings back an element sadly missing in recent movies, gratuitous nudity. Sexy women would "happen" to be topless in the 1970s movies for no better reason than that everyone agreed, including themselves, that their breasts were a genuine pleasure to regard -- the most beautiful naturally occurring shapes in nature, I believe. Now we see breasts only in serious films, for expressing reasons. There's been such a comeback for the strategically positioned bed sheet, you'd think we were back in the 1950s." - Roger Ebert, "Black Dynamite"; Chicago Sun-Times
When online ads attack
This unholy mess is on People.com* right now:
(Click to embiggen)
I hate rollover ads to begin with since they inevitably (purposely?) cause the user to accidentally expand the ad, covering the content of the page (where the real value resides).
But this ad from American Cancer Society (which isn't even in its expanded state) coupled with the subscription ad prevents me from reading the headline and what looks to be the first 2.5 paragraphs of the story. That's bad enough, but there's nothing I can do to get rid of the subscription ad since the American Cancer Society ad is covering the Close button I assume is in the top right corner of the subscription ad. You can't click-and-drag the People ad anywhere and can't shrink the ACS ad to get access to the close button.
Does refreshing the page get rid of both ads? Yes. But that's a lousy user experience, I'd say.
Yeesh.
* Save your judgment. I clicked a friend's link via Twitter, I wasn't looking for the latest Jon and Kate update.
Twitter doesn't leak off the record comments, people do
"There’s no such thing as ‘off the record’ with Twitter."
- Lost Remote*
I don't know if Cory Bergman is serious about that statement or using it for a clever headline, but he's wrong. That's like saying "There's no such thing as 'off the record' with notebooks." Or typewriters. Or computers. Or vocal chords.
Twitter is a tool for journalism. When you're a journalist acting in said capacity, you're operating under the same set of ethics as when you're in the newsroom, on the phone with a source or in any of other traditional setting.
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